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200 sats \ 3 replies \ @Scoresby OP 13h \ parent \ on: "Housing prices are not high by any historical standard" - evoskuil econ
In a different circumstance, might not someone argue that these things are simple correlation and that one cannot draw a causal connection between them?
Let's move the example to vehicles. If we see that the average age of a car-buyer is increasing, that doesn't necessarily mean that cars are too expensive for young people to buy. Perhaps fewer people want cars; perhaps old people are buying cars for young people to drive, perhaps young people are using uber and waymo, perhaps any number of things, one of which might be cars are too expensive for young people to buy.
Same is true for houses. The age distribution of when people are buying their first home does not necessarily imply anything about the expense of a home. More info is needed in order to make such a conclusion.
They certainly are. But I wonder if someone would be willing to buy a house with no dishwasher, one bathroom, 700 square feet, and no central air (which is more like what a house was in the 1950s). It is untested whether a person in their 20s or 30s would be willing to buy such a house.
(Counter-argument to myself: there are a lot of such houses in big cities all over the US (just not newly constructed ones), and people do seem to buy them.
I'm not sure anything Voskuil said had to do with accepting anything. He seems to be arguing with the broader idea that the younger generations (in the US at least) are poorer than their predecessors at similar times of life.
I think this may be a reference to things like Robinhood and general buying of stocks? Maybe also bitcoin (although probably not as he's often said he doesn't think it's an investment). But he may also have been referring to payments from family.
He doesn't include the citation, but whatever he's quoting does include medians. "the median is slightly lower at $83,300–$96,800, around $90,000. This is based on 2024 data (median earnings of $61,907–$73,897 for ages 30–39, adjusted for 4.8% wage growth"
He seems to be arguing with the broader idea that the younger generations (in the US at least) are poorer than their predecessors at similar times of life.
Then I suppose the issue is that they're talking past each other. Nic Carter's original post was about housing. Why would you then want to make a point about overall economic situation?
By the way, I would agree that young people today are richer in real terms than young people of the past.
But I'd also argue that rich in material terms does not necessarily lead to life satisfaction. Just because you can afford $80,000 of doordash but can't buy a house... I don't think that would make you happier than having an $80,000 house and no DoorDash. I think young people are probably less satisfied than in the past. This may have to do with overinflated expectations, social media, any number of things. But let's focus just on housing for now.
We could argue about causality vs correlation, and how to truly interpret the data. But in this case: if the people are saying housing is too expensive, and most of the data is saying housing is too expensive, and most economists by the way are also saying housing is too expensive.... then housing is probably too expensive.
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But I'd also argue that rich in material terms does not necessarily lead to life satisfaction.
This is a great point, and well said.
then housing is probably too expensive.
I need a go look back at newspapers from the 80s or 90s and see how people were talking about housing prices.
My (un-evidenced) suspicion is that they were saying it was expensive. In the same way that old people like to deplore the morality of the youth, the youth like to bemoan the expense of modern life.
You are probably close set to the truth of the matter than Voskuil, but I enjoyed his take because it is not something I hear very often at all, and I do think it has some well-reasoned argument behind it.
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You are right that people will probably be complaining about the same things in every generation, but I have a feeling that if you asked them to rank things in terms of how problematic they are, housing costs would be much higher ranked today than in the 80s and 90s.
Just a guess, I haven't looked at that kind of data.
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